I've officially finished off my bookshelf mini-quilt for my Make Mine Modern swap partner. I really love how this turned out, after being terribly unsure of whether or not this would be any good for not. I think my partner will really like it. I like this little mini-quilt so much that I'm thinking of making another one, since I have a good number of selvages hanging around and quite a few friends and family who love books. Would you guys be interested in a little tutorial?

This mini-quilt was shamelessly inspired by a quilt block I spotted on Flickr a while back, made by the wonderful Amber of One Shabby Chick for the super awesome Ringo Pie bee. I loved what she did, and favorited it for a rainy day. Fast forward a while to my partner assignment in Make Mine Modern, and I knew that I wanted to do this mini-quilt for my partner. I had a lot of fun working on this one, sketching it out and figuring out how to make it as awesome in reality as it seemed in my head.

The book titles, with one exception, are all selvages, which I added some simple double-sided fusible web to, and then adhered them in place after stitching the book fabrics all together in a layout that was pleasing to me. The one book title that is not a selvage comes from Sweetwater's Make Life collection. I tell you, Sweetwater makes the best fabrics currently that use text. I especially love their fresh Sweetwater collection, the colors are so cheery and some of the text fabrics are just gorgeous. But, I digress...

The binding on this little mini-quilt comes from AMH's Innocent Crush collection. I love the varying sizes of the stripes. I'm a big fan of striped binding, and I really like how it works here.

I also love the back of this quilt. This fabric is a completely random find I stumbled upon at Fabricworm, from Victoria & Albert's Grand Tour collection. The whole collection is a series of reproduction prints from the Victoria and Albert Museum, and some of them (like this one) are just so stunning! And just so you know, the painter's tape on the back? Totally not some kind of weird artistic thing, I was just covering up my partner's name :)

I added the embroidery at the bottom after I finished the rest of the top and thought it needed something extra. After an hour of digging through quotes about reading, I stumbled on this one and felt it was just the sentiment I was going for, and it wasn't fifty words long, so it was perfect. My embroidery skills still need a bit of work, but I like how the embroidery turned out.

All I need to do now for this swap is find the right box to start packaging up all of the goodies in. I simply cannot wait to get this swap mailed out and see what my partner thinks. Stay tuned!

This turned out SO great. I seriously hope that's my name under the blue painters tape! You should definitely do a tutorial for this. I know a few people (besides me) who would love this on their wall!

WOW! I love it! The details are awesome- the selvege titles, the quote, and the back. I just won some of that book fabric that you have on the back, it is fantastic, isn't it? Great job, and lucky partner!

Yes, a tutorial please. I even posted about your quilt in hopes of getting even MORE people on board requesting a tutorial. On the back of the quilt, the diagonal quilting of the book on the front makes it look like one of book ladders in a library against the backing fabric. LOVE.IT!!!

Tutorials

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